Them! (1954) - film review

Patrolling the Alamogordo Desert in New Mexico, two police officers come across an abandoned trailer which has been inexplicably wrecked.  Nearby, they find a young girl wandering about in a state of shock, unable or unwilling to speak.  Not far away, a grocers’ store has been smashed up, the mauled body of man lying in the cellar.  Department of Agriculture scientist Dr Harold Medford is called in to investigate, assisted by his daughter, Pat.  Their initial prognosis is born out: the trailer and the store were attacked not by men but by twenty-foot long ants, mutations caused by an atom bomb test in the area some years before.  The scientists locate the ant nest, enabling the military to destroy its oversized insect occupants with flamethrowers.  But, exploring the nest, Pat makes a horrifying discovery.  Two queen ants have flown from the nest with several male consorts.  If these mate and create new colonies, it is only a matter of weeks before the giant ant population will reach several thousand.  After that, nothing will prevent them from taking over the world, driving mankind to extinction...

The first and arguably the best of the 1950s creature features, Them! is easily one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made.  It immediately spawned a raft of similar movies featuring overgrown monstrosities and inspired subsequent generations of filmmakers.  James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) is a virtual remake of Them! and the famous Japanese Godzilla films clearly owe much to the film.  Among the numerous lower grade sci-fi rip-offs that attempted to capitalise on the success of Them! were Robert Gordon’s It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) and Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955).

Them! was an extraordinarily successful film (it was Warner Brothers’ biggest hit that year) and perhaps one reason for this was that it tapped into two prevailing concerns in America of the early 1950s – infiltration by Communist agents and anxieties about the nuclear age.  These two themes recur to varying degrees in many sci-fi films of this era but usually in a jokey, B-movie fashion, not in the sober, almost didactic manner that Them! offers.  Here, the monsters are the direct result of man’s unleashing of a dangerous and little understood force of nature, radioactivity, and these same monsters – oversized ants who like crushing people with their mandibles – are Soviet agents in all but name, the enemy hiding in the shadows, poised to take over the world if we let them.  

What sets Them! apart from other contemporary sci-fi offerings is its trenchant realism.  The characters are convincingly drawn (especially the Quatermass-like Dr Medford, well-played by Edmund Gwenn); the action sequences are staged and shot with an almost documentary-like authenticity; and there are even some educational asides, in which we learn some interesting facts about ants.  The only let down is the realisation of the giant ants, which appear far too cute and static to be remotely frightening, although when seen in long shot they do send a shiver down the spine.  

Warner Brothers had originally intended to make Them! in colour and in 3D, but reverted to widescreen black and white after some unpromising test shots had been made.  This was certainly a wise decision – the noirish monochrome photography is what gives the film its menacing doom-laden atmosphere, which is particularly effective in the claustrophobic underground sequences (i.e. in the desert nest and the Los Angeles sewers).  Well-directed by Gordon Douglas (a consistently underrated filmmaker), Them! is a tense and compelling sci-fi / horror drama that has dated far better than many films of its genre and era.  It still manages to deliver the requisite chills and it provides a cogent warning of what the future may hold for mankind if we persist in tampering with the forces of nature.  Maybe the film isn’t so far fetched...

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